


Churro is a good name

by zombieboyband



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Dogs, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 22:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6445111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombieboyband/pseuds/zombieboyband
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen and Frank, during the trial, talking. What <i>did</i> happen to that dog?</p><p>
  <i>With that expression and with his hands in front of him, something about Frank seems almost boyish. But he's not a different man, and his hands are in front of him not because he put them there, but because he's in handcuffs, because he's in an orange jumpsuit, because he's murdered thirty people.</i>
</p><p><i>"I never liked naming shit. My little girl though, she loved naming everything. Always wanted to name things after food. A teddy bear named Brownie, a kitten named Noodle. She named her first goldfish Cake. Things like that."</i><br/>[Read it as gen, read it as Kastle. Either way works.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Churro is a good name

"When did it fall apart?"

Frank Castle frowns, eyebrows together, forehead furrowed, eyes downcast.

"Sorry," Karen says, swallowing thickly. "I mean, how did they find you?"

"Bleeding out in the cemetery, you know that."

"No--the Irish. How did they find you?"

Karen's leaning forward, intent on the question, and Frank still hasn't looked up at her. On a different man, in a different place, she might have described the shape of his lips as _pouty_. With that expression and with his hands in front of him, something about Frank seems almost boyish. But he's not a different man, and his hands are in front of him not because he put them there, but because he's in handcuffs, because he's in an orange jumpsuit, because he's murdered thirty people. Karen knows this. Karen never forgets this. Not really.

"The point of failure was probably the dog," Frank says.

"Um." Karen tilts her head, as if looking at him from a different angle might help her understand. "What?" He's murdered thirty people but that hasn't killed any pets that she knows of and she's not sure she can handle hearing him describe killing a dog in the thorough way he habitually details gunshot wounds.

Karen hears chains rattling and soft scuffling sound on the floor. Frank kicks a table leg listlessly.

"The dog," he says again, as if Karen knows all about the dog and is just being forgetful.

"I don't know about the dog." Karen's rebuke is gentle, and Frank huffs out an exhale before finally raising his eyes to hers.

"The dog. When I hit the Irish. They had a dog, they had been beating the dog, they had been fighting the dog...one of those steely blue pit bulls, you know..." He looks away again, frustrated. "They had been fighting the dog and fuck that, and I knew there would be cops after, clean up. Some cops are great with dogs, some cops aren't, the dog was scared outta his mind from all the gunfire, wasn't gonna be his fault if he snapped at someone, but pits are the kind of dogs that get shot when they're scared. So I took the damn dog."

"You took the dog...where?" Karen asks, still uneasy about where this story is going.

"I took him with me, to whatever sniper's nest I was in. Sometimes I took him in the van."

"You...had a pet dog? While you were...?"

Frank turns his head away from her for a second. "Not a pet. But I couldn't just dump him somewhere."

Karen realizes, suddenly: he's _embarrassed_ about the dog. "Oh."

"What?"

Karen shuffles some papers in front of her while ignoring the question. "Okay, so what about the dog?"

"I took him on walks. Mostly late at night, early morning, but dogs need to go out, okay?"

"Of course," Karen agrees, with a hand over her mouth to hide her lips, in case she smiles. Frank sounds more defensive about walking a dog than he has about--nearly anything else, really.

"I bought dog food and shit--look, the point is, the Irish knew I had the dog, they took the dog."

"Did this dog have a name?"

"No, no. I didn't want to name him. You name a dog, you get feelings for the dog."

Karen tries to picture it: Frank moving from safe house to safe house, grim faced and taciturn, unsmiling when a dog licks his face. It's absurd. She can't do it. She's sure that Frank had to smile. You don't take a dog from safe house to safe house, you don't make room for a dog when you're on a revenge spree, unless you have feelings for the dog. 

"You laughing at me?" Frank asks.

She tries to play it off, to cough, but a tiny laugh slips from her lips before she can make it something else. 

"You're laughing at me," Frank says, but he doesn't sound angry about it.

"Maybe a little," Karen concedes. "It's just--you liked the dog, you obviously liked the dog."

"I like all dogs. I'm a dog guy."

"I like dogs, too. And cats. Both."

Frank shrugs at this. "Can't trust people that don't."

"Can't trust people just because they do, either."

"Can't trust most people."

'But you can trust most dogs," Karen says, not hiding her small smile for him this time.

Frank makes a noise like _hrmph_. "Depends. There's dog shaped dogs, and then there's..." His hands, big and still battered, make a vague shape on the top of the table. It's about the size of a breadbox.

"Small dogs are still dogs," Karen disagrees.

They're smiling at each other. Small smiles, guarded smiles, but smiles nonetheless. They're caught in a moment that neither of them means to be in--or at least, Karen didn't mean to be here, smiling at a man in an orange jumpsuit while there's a file thick with pictures of his gristly handiwork on the table between them. It's not their first moment like this and Karen doubts it will be their last. Moments like these are where she sees Frank as the man he used to be: someone rough hewn but handsome, someone casually charming and at ease, someone with eyes that crinkle at the corners when he smiles, someone who mentions his wife and children with obvious joy and love in his voice. A husband, a soldier, a father. Someone who likes dogs. Someone who calls women ma'am. 

The manila folder with crime scene photos in it seems to radiate heat. Karen's fingers brush against it tentatively, distractedly. She is no longer smiling. Neither is Frank. The moment is gone. 

"I like it best when little dogs have big tough dog names," she says, clearing her throat. The moment is gone and she shouldn't try to get it back, she shouldn't want it back. 

"I never liked naming shit," Frank says, leaning back in his chair, looking at the ceiling somewhere over Karen's shoulder, already faraway. "My little girl though, she loved naming everything. Always wanted to name things after food. A teddy bear named Brownie, a kitten named Noodle. She named her first goldfish Cake. Things like that."

"I knew a dog named Cheddar once," Karen says, encouraging him.

Frank is smiling again, kind of. It's not the usual smile. It's the slightest tug of his lips, small and almost private, the one he gets when he talks about his family. Karen wants him to keep going.

"So my wife and I, we riffed on that all the time, we would joke about naming things Tiramisu, Tres Leches, Struffoli...leave desserts and say we'd name the next kid Lobster Thermidor or whatever."

He's getting past the point where the memories make him smile and nearing the place where the light in his eyes dies.

"Churro," Karen suggests.

"Churro is a good name for a dog," Frank agrees, and the spark in his eyes lasts a little longer, but it's not long enough. He's pensive again, not quite haunted but on his way to it.

Karen waits. Sometimes Frank just needs someone to be patient with him. Patient and unafraid.

"Red said he'd take care of the dog. I figure he's a soft touch and he meant take care, not take out, but maybe he just dumped the dog in a county shelter. Shit."

"Is that bad?"

"Aw, ma'am. You gonna make me say it?"

"Please."

"Pits get put down in shelters all the time. No one wants them, no one takes them home. People are scared of them."

"Oh," Karen says, feeling something tighten in her chest, "I guess that makes--not sense, but I see how that could happen."

"Time's almost up," Frank observes. Karen doesn't check to see if he's right. He always is. His internal clock is eerily accurate. "You gotta leave soon. Any more questions from lawyer boy?"

"No, we got through those already."

"Do they ever try to stop you from coming? Nelson or Murdock?"

"They try." Karen sighed. "They try a little, anyway. Not that it matters, since I want to come and wouldn't let them stop me. They do ask if I'm afraid."

"Are you?"

"No." Karen says it casually and without even thinking about it, as if someone just asked her to spell her own name, but Frank stays quiet and looks at her for a long moment. "What?"

"Are they?"

"Are they scared of you?" Karen asks. "Matt, I don't know what he thinks. Foggy..."

"Hm," Frank says, and it's not a question.

"Foggy's terrified of you, but you know that," Karen says.

"He'd leave my ass at the animal shelter if I was a dog, yeah, I know."

"Maybe. But you're not going to be put down. We made sure of that already." Her fingers drum across the table. Across the file with the pictures, still smoldering hot in her mind.

"You're distracted."

"I have to go." Karen starts gathering her things together, shoving them into her purse. "Sorry, Frank."

"Your time was about up anyway," Frank says. "Do your thing, ma'am."

++

By the time she finds Foggy, she's blinked the wet sheen out of her eyes.

"Why didn't anyone tell me about the dog?" she demands, no preamble. "Why isn't the dog in the reports?"

"Hello to you, too. Yeah, my day's going all right. Could be better, could be worse. Thanks for asking."

"Foggy!" 

"I don't know about any dog," Foggy says, dropping the pen in his hand so that he can raise his arms up to heaven, beseeching and frazzled. "What dog? Why I am supposed to know about dogs now? Isn't it enough that I have to run this trial and therefore my career into the ground all by myself?"

"Frank had a dog," Karen says. 

"With him in central park? That's a new fact."

"No, no. After. While he was..."

Foggy bounces his blond eyebrows up at her. "While he was running around...punishing? The Punisher had a dog? Are you serious? Am I hallucinating from the sleep deprivation already?"

"Yeah." Karen rubs her face tiredly and sits across from Foggy. "Sorry for being abrupt, I just...I have a lot on my mind."

"Like dogs."

"One dog."

"You're not going to...you are, aren't you?"

Karen gives him a hopeful look.

Foggy lets his forehead thud down onto the desk. "Sure. Go ahead. I'll just be here, quietly dying."

"You're the best," she says.

++

The next day, Karen slides a piece of paper across the table. Frank glances at it.

"Ma'am?" he asks, politely requesting some kind of explanation.

"No, huh?" Karen pulls out another sheet of paper from a fresh manila folder. Frank tilts his head and quirks his eyebrows at her. "Not that one, either?"

"Why are you showing me pictures of sad looking dogs?"  
.  
"They're not all sad, they just look sad with the chain link cages...um."

"They're sad," Frank says.

Karen puts the third print out in front of Frank. This time, he looks at the picture a second longer, as if to make sure.

"You didn't tell me what he looked like, or...I didn't ask you, so...I had to guess," Karen says. "Big dog, male, full or part pit...All three of these were dropped off anonymously, right after you were arrested."

"That's him," Frank confirms.

"Whew," Karen says. She gathers the pictures up again, stacking them tidily and returning them to the folder. "Okay, good. You were right, he was already on the euthanasia list, days to go."

"Was?"

"I got one of the local rescues to take him," Karen said. "The other two I managed to get transferred to no kill shelters, but yours--"

"He's not mine."

"Your dog had to go to one of those rescue groups that focuses on, what was the word...bully breeds? So." Karen clears her throat. "The point is. He's safe. Okay?"

Frank glances away from her, like the walls must be very interesting, but then he looks at her steadily. "How many calls did you have make before you found that dog?"

"A few." Karen gives him one of her polite, bright smiles, one of her professional type smiles, hoping that will satisfy him. It doesn't. He knows the difference.

"And then you placed him."

"Mm," Karen says, thinking of how to change the subject.

"You work fast."

"I try. He didn't have a lot of time. We don't, either." She's hoping he'll take the hint.

"You listened to me. You took everything I said seriously."

"I usually do."

"Nothing gets in your way, huh? Once you decide you're gonna get answers?"

"I'm learning. I made some mistakes before that cost a lot." She tries not to think of Ben and fails. "But I didn't spend all day on the dog, that was easy. I mean, it wasn't _easy_ easy, but by comparison: easy. Once I was done there I dug up some more stuff on--"

"Ma'am?"

"Yes, Frank?"

"Thank you."

Karen bites the inside of her lip and thinks about dogs, about people hung up on meat hooks, about plastic dinosaurs all over the floor, about how the marks Frank's knuckles are only ever in the places where properly, powerfully thrown punches leave scrapes and bruises. 

She opens the next folder to avoid looking at him as she says, "You're welcome."

**Author's Note:**

> Dogs are for life, not just for cuteness. Adopt don't shop, etc., etc.


End file.
